1. Field of the Invention
Embodiments relate to an apparatus and a method for measuring a change in image quality occurring due to generation of a panoramic image and generating a panoramic image based on a result of the measuring.
2. Description of the Related Art
A method of generating a panoramic image may spatially stitch images obtained by capturing a target space which is divided into areas using a plurality of cameras and may thus provide a wide angle of view greater than an angle of human view.
A stitching method, which is an existing method of generating a panoramic image, may stitch neighboring images among a plurality of images captured by a plurality of cameras to generate a panoramic image.
An existing method of generating a panoramic image may generate neighboring images by capturing an object overlapping in a certain range using cameras. The method may then match feature points included in overlapping captured areas, extract matching points, and determine a homography which is a geometrical relationship between the neighboring images based on the matching points. The method may then geometrically transform a reference image to be stitched to a base image using the determined homography to generate a panoramic image.
Here, a degree of an image quality degradation of the geometrically transformed reference image may be determined based on an accuracy of the homography. The accuracy of the homography may vary depending on an image capturing method, a camera pose, a degree of overlap, a distance at which an object is captured, and the like. For example, when an object is present each in a short distance and a long distance within an overlapping area, a homography may be inclined to one object based on a location of a matching point and thus, an image quality may be significantly degraded.
Thus, in generating a panoramic image using a matching point, there is a desire for a method of predicting a change in image quality and selecting a matching point to minimize an image quality degradation.